pes the dying.

"Come, Henriot," said he, extending his hand with a gentleness of voice
Henry had never before noticed in him. "Come in; I have been very
unhappy at not seeing you for so long. I have tormented you greatly
during my life, my poor friend, and sometimes, believe me, I have
reproached myself for it. Sometimes I have taken the hands of those who
tormented you, it is true, but a king cannot control circumstances, and
besides my mother Catharine, my brothers D'Anjou and D'Alencon, I had to
consider during my lifetime something else which was troublesome and
which ceases the moment I draw near to death--state policy."

"Sire," murmured Henry, "I remember only the love I have always had for
my brother, the respect I have always felt for my King."

"Yes, yes, you are right," said Charles, "and I am grateful to you for
saying this, Henriot, for truly you have suffered a great deal under my
reign without counting the fact that it was during my reign that your
poor mother died. But you must have seen that I was often driven?
Sometimes I have resisted, but oftener I have yielded from very fatigue.
But, as you said, let us not talk of the past. Now it is the present
which concerns me; it is the future which frightens me."

And the poor King hid his livid face in his emaciated hands.

After a moment's silence he shook his head as if to drive away all
gloomy thoughts, thus causing a shower of blood to fall about him.

"We must save the state," he continued in a low tone, leaning towards
Henry. "We must prevent its falling into the hands of fanatics or
women."

As we have just said, Charles uttered these words in a low tone, yet
Henry thought he heard behind the headboard something like a dull
exclamation of anger. Perhaps some opening made in the wall at the
instigation of Charles himself permitted Catharine to hear this final
conversation.

"Of women?" said the King of Navarre to provoke an explanation.

"Yes, Henry," said Charles, "my mother wishes the regency until my
brother returns from Poland. But mind what I tell you, he will not come
back."

"Why not?" cried Henry, whose heart gave a joyful leap.

"No, he cannot return," continued Charles, "because his subjects will
not let him leave."

"But," said Henry, "do you not suppose, brother, that the queen mother
has already written to him?"

"Yes, but Nancey stopped the courier at Chateau Thierry, and brought me
the letter, in which she said I was to d